It is frequently desirable to wear eye protection and ear protection. In many industrial and construction settings safety regulations make wearing safety glasses mandatory, and frequently, it is also mandatory to wear earplugs.
Accordingly, workers may be required to possess safety glasses, a left earplug and a right earplug. A worker may lose one or both earplugs, and not bother to wear earplugs. This omission may not be noticed by a supervisor. The failure to wear safety glasses and/or ear protection devices may result in a worker's loss of sight and/or hearing.
Employers may be subjected to substantial workers' compensation claims from the loss of sight or hearing. Since hearing loss may not be revealed for several years after periods of noise exposure, an employer may be subject to workers' compensation claims for events that occurred many years earlier.
There is a need for a device that will protect the eyes of a wearer from debris, projectiles, and similar hazards from foreign materials. Further, there is a need for eye protection that incorporates ear protection. The ear protection should not simply be present in the ears, but the ear protection must be sufficiently pressed into the ears to seal the ear from noise. At the same time, the safety device must be adaptable to a wide range of wearers, each of whom may have different distances from the bridge of the nose to the ears, with these distances varying three-dimensionally. A single device that protects the ears and eyes should be suitable for wear by a large percentage of the adult population.